Hello, World.

I spent nearly the entire day outside. It was gorgeous. Not a cloud in the sky. I have this garden that needs a good deal of work since I neglected it beginning around July of last year. Maybe late June. Anyway, the neglect included not really cutting back the weeds in the paths between beds because my line trimmer broke.

The thing is just a complete mess.

I was out there fixing part of the fence I need to keep the deer and the groundhogs and the rabbits out. Last year the groundhog dug under my fence so many times I simply gave up. He ate all my beans and lettuce and ate the stems of the snap peas. This year I'm going to fix his wagon, though. I'm putting up two layers of fence and I'm burying the fence in dirt liberally spiked with crushed red pepper and cinnamon.

I was also trying to get a few of the beds in order. They were so overgrown with weeds and dead stuff from last fall that I'm trying to get my Mantis back from a neighbor who borrowed it two years ago.

Perhaps some of you have read gardening books or looked at pictures in magazines about gardens. Gardens in magazines and books tend to look nice and settled. They have orderly, well-kept paths running among the beds, and the beds all look rather precise. I have not managed such a garden, although I'd like to. My garden is on sloping ground that probably falls a foot and a half from the top side to the bottom side. Given that I don't have a fortune for landscaping, for my paths around the beds I've made do with the flatter rocks I dug up when preparing the beds and several flat rocks that were left over from a construction project. They work well when I have my line trimmer to knock the grass and other things that grow between the cracks back, but as I mentioned my trimmer broke last summer and the rocks are now buried under tall dead grass.

Writing this post, I realize I need to get a new trimmer.